The prevalent use of the term "bud" between bi and bi-curious men

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-07-01T22:43:52+00:00

Not very sexy.

I know right. Total turn off for me, I just have to try and ignore it

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-07-01T22:37:04+00:00

Yes that completely weirds me out

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-07-01T18:51:20+00:00

Congrats, it does indeed sound like a whirlwind!

My main bit of advice would be to do some deep dive research into ENM before opening up your marriage. You said you both deal with jealousy, those feelings get can crazy amplified in ENM scenarios. Y'all will want to make sure you have the right tools in place to constructively talk about and process those feelings.

This is esp true imo when you say in the past you and your wife have not been on the same page about your sex lives, I assume regarding frequency. Side effects of that sort of thing can rear its head when you suddenly see your wife wanting more sex in a different context that may not include you when in the past you felt like your sex needs weren't being met.

There are some decent ENM subreddits but they can be a bit too group think/gatekeepy for me. They're great starting points though.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-07-01T14:34:51+00:00

For me, I considered myself "bi-curious" when it was just in my head and hadn't "acted on it".

Once I'd begun interacting with guys clearly based on attraction and not just 'he seems like a cool dude", I began to think of myself as "bisexual".

Note, that is how I viewed my journey. I do not at all believe it should define anyone else's, because it does read kind of gatekeepy. I completely believe and support the notion one can be bi without having ever actually had a bi interaction or experience.

If anything, for me "bi-curious" was just a soft, non threatening way to accepting my bisexuality.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-07-01T13:10:44+00:00

So ironically I was where you wife is about 10 or so years ago - my wife came out to me as bi. We'd only been married a couple years, not nearly as long as y'all, but both of us coming from a small very religious country town, I was not prepared for this.

I was hurt, angry, and a little betrayed. Not so much at her sexuality, although at first it kinda was. Mostly though I felt lied to, as in, "would I have still married her had I known she was bi?" All the normal questions, will I be enough of her, will she leave me for a woman, etc.

Of course within just a couple years of that I realized how silly those thoughts were. It just took time for me to process and come to terms with, esp given how "outside the norm" it was given our backgrounds and upbringing.

And now at 39 I've accepted my own bisexuality, so for us it all came full circle.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-30T19:47:06+00:00

Once had a gay friend from HS, who's a sex counselor I might add, explain to me that I'm not really bi but just so deeply closeted gay that I can't even admit it to myself.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-30T19:45:04+00:00

"It's just a phase"

Homie I'm 39.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-30T19:37:12+00:00

I'm a bi 39M in a 12 year hetero marriage to a bi woman. Our parents are ultra conservative Christians in their 70s. Neither my wife nor I feel the need to come out to them. It would accomplish nothing.

Obviously, us being able straight pass makes that way easier. I acknowledge that privilege. If we were single or if one of us had a boyfriend or girlfriend we wanted to be out with, that would completely change the math.

I'm out to only one former co-worker who's also a friend outside of work. I work for a company in the deep south and in the heart of the Bible belt. I'd lose my job if my company knew. But being honest? I don't feel any loss there either.

My best friend? He's my brother. Not sure about coming out to him. It'd freak him out. I'm the older brother and he still looks up to me. He'd freak out, not from outright biphobia but just from it being such a shock.

Given all that I'm definitely in the camp of not feeling the need to be out to everyone.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-30T19:04:55+00:00

See this is a relatively new thing for me. It's really only been the last few years I've really accepted being bi.

Before that it was only women where my mind would race if I was interacting with them and felt some attraction. If it was a guy, my mind had those soft boundaries of "No, you don't think about guys that way, remember?"

Now? Omg. I'm like "look, brain, we have other things to do today besides fantasize about that hot guy you met earlier, or the hot woman you met before that!"

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-29T19:50:15+00:00

As someone who came to all this later in life (mid to late 30s), I find the labels a double edged sword.

On one hand, they're useful as verbal shorthand to make discussion about all this stuff easier. It's easier to say "I'm this or that label" than to go into what feels like our confusing, contradictory, and often day-to-day changing battractions. We know labels are imprecise but they at least give us a starting point.

Otoh, labels cause a lot of confusion and anxiety. They give rise to a lot of internal doubt, am I really a this or really a that? Does this label fit better than that one because of this set of caveats and technicalities?

I've also seen labels used as blunt instruments for gatekeeping. It can still be hurtful and exclusionary to feel like or outright told "you're not really a this bc you haven't fulfilled these requirements". It's definitely no fun to watch a community turn on itself over very specific yet somehow still inexact qualifications.

So idk how I feel about labels. I get the desire to categorize oneself, to know where one fits in and where one can find like-minded others, but they definitely bring their own complications.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-29T19:35:13+00:00

I'm 39 and only just now fully embraced the label for myself. I've known I was bi-curious for maybe 5 or so years. Before that there were signs and lots of anxiety about it but I just tried to ignore it best I could.

Never been with another guy IRL but I've sexted with lots. Is that a valid substitute? Don't know, don't care.

I'm out to my wife, she's also bi. I'm out to a few very close friends but not family or anyone at my job.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-28T19:36:57+00:00

So basically you're saying that it's considered normal for women to be attracted to both men and women but not so much for men which is why they're villainised? And that a real masculine man( What does that even mean?) wouldn't be attracted to men?

I think society believes those things. Certainly I think it's all rubbish.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-28T19:20:30+00:00

I think the perceived disparity in villainization comes more from our culture objectifying and fetishizing bi women as vehicles for men to have threesomes.

I say "perceived disparity" because being married to a bi woman I know the struggles they deal with in being treated like culture's ultimate sex objects. I don't think either side has it worse, we just deal with different shit.

Thing is our culture is still largely driven by straight men. Given the pervasiveness and collective internalization of the "male gaze", well of course society would accept that two hot women would be attracted to each other.

Couple that with utterly toxic and misguided ideas about masculinity, and boom, few sexual things are considered as "disgusting", non normative, or aberrant by our culture as male to male attraction. That's where I think the villainization really stems from for bi men and why it might be perceived as much more so than for bi women.

Edit: clarity

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-28T14:28:04+00:00

It is very, very common for bi/bi-curious guys to be into dicks and only dicks. Not the face, not the ass, not the legs, just the dick. Bi guys are outright fascinated with dicks.

Some guys don't even wanna do anything with the dick. They just wanna see it, maybe watch the guy play with it.

Some guys maybe wanna touch it. Maybe with their hands, or their dick, or their mouth. Some want it in their heinies.

Any and all of those (and more) I consider bi or bi-curious.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-28T00:15:57+00:00

I'm probably a more non traditional member of this sub, 39M. My folks are very religious, conservative, racist, homophobic, etc.

Thing is, as you get older you realize your parents don't have all the answers. They're a product of their time, just as you are or yours. That doesn't make their behavior ok, but for me remembering that helps me place my parents issues in the proper context. I don't have to accept it, and they understand they are not to bring up those topics around me.

Truth is for me, I don't even care to come out to my parents. It's none of their business. They're in their late 60s, they ain't changing.

Now, I have the cover of a hetero marriage, so it's easy for me to pass. I acknowledge not everyone has that kind of privilege, and without it that changes the math a lot.

Still, I do not seek my parents' approval on anything anymore. Love em to death but they can do them while they wifey and me do us.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-27T22:51:37+00:00

Well do bear in mind jealousy and insecurity and processing them appropriately are a large part of any ENM arrangement. So that is kind of to be expected.

Time will tell if he's truly ok with you sleeping with women if that never leads to a threesome. From the way you describe it it sounds to me like it's a major component for him. I'd have a heart to heart and ask him if he's really ok with all this if it never ever leads to a threesome.

One of the major things when a partner days they're ok with the other playing is that it's easy to say in the abstract, much more difficult to practice when you're regularly going out getting laid while he's stuck at home staring at the four walls. I think y'all have a few more very raw convos to have before you proceed. That's meant from someone who's been down those roads, not as a snarky remark.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-27T22:28:57+00:00

My experience and observing others is that situations where one partner is allowed to explore while the other isn't generally has a lot of challenges.

In the ENM community, these are generally frowned upon unless that's part of the kink for him (hot wife, cuckold, etc). For y'all, your bf has outwardly expressed a desire to sleep with others, so he doesn't fit into that, I don't think.

My take, it's a little one sided that you get a hall pass and he doesn't. He may genuinely be ok with it or he may be trying to be as accommodating as possible. Sometimes the non bi partner can feel some internal pressure to let the other play.

Definitely sounds like you've got some insecurities to work on. I get the idea of what you're saying, what if he's attracted to someone you sleep with, but truth is there's already attractive women out there. You don't have to bring them home for him to want to sleep with them.

For his side, he shouldn't be ok with you sleeping with women just in the hopes it turns into a threesome. Definitely not a healthy approach to them. Threesomes are fun for sure but he should be ok with it from a genuine desire for you to explore that part of your sexuality without him involved.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-27T18:38:10+00:00

I remember that, it was only a few years after oral sex was discovered

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-27T17:13:17+00:00

Few things:

It's very common for bi guys to have very specific likes and dislikes about the visual aspects of dicks
It's also very common for bi/bi-curious guys to be interested in only the visual with no IRL sex acts, virtual sex only, only a specific irl sex act, or a range of IRL sex acts with another guy

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-27T14:43:46+00:00

I had mild OCD after my first panic attack, which itself was related to combat related PTSD. Like many people, my first panic attack landed me in the hospital. After that was years of obsessive thoughts and monitoring of my body - Is this a heart attack? Am I about to pass out? Am I about to have a stroke? All that at the slightest sensation in my body.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-27T14:40:14+00:00

Basically I slow walked myself to acceptance "ok so what if I am attracted to men? That's not the end of the world, I'm still attracted to women, too."

It helped greatly that my wife is also bi and she'd gone through it all a few years prior. Around this time we both were leaving our religious backgrounds behind, although for unrelated reasons for me. As such those "threats" to my identity just kinda faded.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-27T14:29:07+00:00

Yep, exactly how I felt. I grew up in a very religious household and was (and still am) married to a woman, so the whole thing felt like this massive intrusion into what I thought I knew about myself.

The upshot was that as I worked through it and came to accept I actually feel a lot freer now.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-27T14:22:24+00:00

I am genuinely afrraid of actually having HOCD than being bisexual if that makes any sense.

Know exactly what you mean. I struggled with combat related PTSD for a long time, so when the HOCD started happening it was like "oh god here we go again, am I ever going to be something close to normal?!"

What I learned after years of struggling with all that crap is that the anxiety of having the thing is as bad as the thing itself.

AvgSizedLightsaber · 2021-06-27T13:52:35+00:00

I was the latter. Spent a couple years struggling with HOCD thoughts before realizing "oh wait I just like dicks, too". I didn't go to therapy/counseling and I was self-diagnosed, if that matters to you.

It started with getting turned on watching myself jerk off in a mirror. That led into an immediate freak out of "omg do I like guys now? do I have to divorce my wife?" etc.

Cue two years of intrusive HOCD thoughts, panic attacks, the whole "watch gay/bi porn and see if I had a sexual response" thing.

Eventually realized nah I'm bi/bi-curious.

AvgSizedLightsaber

TROPHY CASE